The Secret Sauce to Relationships with Alison Armstrong

 

[00:00:05] Introducing | Alison Armstrong

 

Dr. Willow Brown: Welcome. We are so honored and so thrilled. Our next guest is one of the biggest influences in both Leah and I's career, and so we're so thrilled to have her. 

Announcer: Welcome to the Sex Reimagined podcast, where sex is shame free and pleasure forward. Let's get into the show. 

Dr. Willow Brown: You're going to have fun with us today. We're excited to have you. Welcome Allison. Such a pleasure. 

Alison Armstrong: Thank you. I'm really glad to be here. And I love the title of the summit. That's very big on imagination. Combating hallucination. I just did a program on that called Thrive Your Life. Imagination for Hallucination.

So I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you.

Dr. Willow Brown: I love it. Great. 

Leah Piper: So I'm really curious Allison, we've, Willow and I both done a lot of your work. I started off like many people who've done your work doing Celebrating Men, Satisfying Women that we, you know, it was so great. And then continuing on to do Men in Sex and Understanding Women and the Queen course and many of your audio programs.

One of the things I so loved was so impactful for me was when you would have a panel of men of all different ages come at the end and we got to submit our questions and hear from their heart at these different stages of development. Really got some gems from that. And I'm curious, you've had this beautiful career.

You've affected so many people. 

What are you excited about right now? Where is your work? 

Flourishing. What's got you feeling alive?

Alison Armstrong: This afternoon, I was telling my boyfriend, my playmate, my lover about what I was doing this afternoon. And he's like, oh, should I stay?

Should I sit on the couchwhile I do this. And I'm like, look, I get glowy enough talking about you if you're actually sitting there. No, no, no, no. This is never going to work. 

Dr. Willow Brown: You won't be able to do the interview. That's a sign of a good boyfriend lover friend there. Congratulations.

 

[00:02:28] Your 60's is the new 20's when it comes to sex

 

Alison Armstrong: I didn't know we all excited about Sex Reimagined.

It's because I couldn't imagine, couldn't I tell him, Dan, you would be a dream come true if I could have dreamt you. Wow. But I couldn't, if somebody had said, when, you know, you're in your sixties, you're going to have the best sex of your entire life. 

Dr. Willow Brown: You wouldn't have believed. Yeah. 

Alison Armstrong: Don't people stop.

Leah Piper: I can believe it. I love that. I can actually believe that one. 

Alison Armstrong: And I was, talking to Dan about it. Right? He's two years older than maybe people's sex lives wind down because they think they're supposed to. And maybe our job is to tell No. Imagine no self consciousness, right? Imagine wrinkles are just like hot.

Well, they're just, they're just not anything. 

Dr. Willow Brown: Neither nor there. 

Alison Armstrong: They're irrelevant to pleasure, love. 

Dr. Willow Brown: That's true. Wrinkles are irrelevant to pleasure. Let's make that a quote on our social. 

Leah Piper: We're going to create a meme. That's it. Yeah. 

We're call it the Alison Armstrong. Sex and wrinkles. 

Dr. Willow Brown: It's a pleasure. Love that.

Leah Piper: Next level, we're going next level. 

Dr. Willow Brown: What else have you discovered, Alison? 

Leah Piper: Yeah. What else are you learning at this romantic style?

 

[00:04:07] The Breakthrough You Experience When You Honor Yourself

 

Alison Armstrong: Oh my gosh. Well, this boundary thing and and flying your flag. Right. And I love that you had Ian as part of the summit in erotic blueprints.

I mean, they are, to me, they're one of the most important breakthroughs in honoring ourselves. Just the self-knowledge, self-acceptance, right? This is what does it for me and this is what doesn't do it for me. And when Dan and I were introduced by one of my students, we couldn't talk for a while in the middle of leading a program.

And so we were texting and one of the things that I did was send him the link. I sent him two very important links msjaiya.com and thepowerofwhen.com, Dr. Michael Bruce's work, and which is also relevant to sex reimagined because it talks about the four different genetic types that determine the release of hormones that are in charge of sleep and focus and sociability and sex drive.

And I was always trying to get Greg to have sex, like at eight o'clock at night. 

Dr. Willow Brown: He wasn't into it. Huh. 

Leah Piper: I'm like, give it to me at four. 

Alison Armstrong: He was a nothing by eight o'clock. And then he was always trying to get me to have sex at six o'clock in the morning.

Dr. Willow Brown: Yeah. That's not a good time for most women. 

Alison Armstrong: Well, actually depends. It depends. This is actually genetically determined. Okay. So, six o'clock is good for me. 6:30 I have the highest levels of melatonin. That's when I'm sleeping. Which I found out that, you know, having sex when you're sleepy is actually really good.

Because your mind doesn't get away. It's not on, it's not on to commentary and do all that. Right? Sleepy's a great way to ask. 

Leah Piper: I do like a little dreamy, sleepy. Yes. 

Alison Armstrong: Yes. But, so Dr. Michael Bruce's work is like really understanding this. So I sent Dan thepowerofwhenquiz.com and missjaiya.com, and he sent me back the information like we hadn't met yet, and I knew his erotic blueprint.

Dr. Willow Brown: Oh, there you go. Getting ahead of the game.

 

[00:06:46] The Role of Desire In A Relationship

 

Alison Armstrong: Oh yeah. And I, younger women don't need to lead with this so much. But around my age, I was shocked at how many men and women have signed off sex. And unfortunately for men, it usually happens. They have an incident that they then call erectile dysfunction.

They don't know what the dysfunction actually was, and then they get worried, right? And they get all in their heads, and then they're like, let's just be affectionate. So there were men who were signed enough sex because they thought they couldn't win at it, but it's because they didn't know, like almost no one knows.

We talked about this in understanding women, the role of desire in causing sex to start and causing hotness, right? Like most women are turned on by a man who desires her. Well, guess what? Men are turned on by a woman who desires him, and we're so worried about being desirable instead of expressing desire.

We're actually trying to get something going with that stimulus. We got it backwards. 

Dr. Willow Brown: That's right. 

Leah Piper: It's one of the things that I hear from my male students in relationship, it's one of their biggest complaints is they don't feel desired. 

Alison Armstrong: Yes. Yes. And the women will have the same complaint.

I don't feel desired. And both are like not expressing desire until it seems like the other person desires them. because then they won't get rejected. So both are actually withholding the thing that would get the fire starting.

Dr. Willow Brown: And what both really want.

Alison Armstrong: What both really want. A minute. I don't want to make myself blush. So what if you didn't let the fires go out? Right? What if you are like our ancestors and you carry, you know, a little burning ember, little coal, you know, packed carefully away from one campsite to the next? What if having that spark doesn't make mean you have to have sex and therefore you have to clear your schedule and get rid of the kids and do all that stuff?

You can just have the spark and you can just, you know, blow the spark from time to time. And when you do that, the experiences, I call it loverness. Do you know I have a lover. I have a lover. Whether or not I'm having sex right now, there's this sense of loveness, there's that staying that 20 seconds longer to kiss and mean it.

Yeah. To bite that lip. I call Deco.

The first time Dan kissed me, we just met and he, and we just, we were so excited to meet each other. Right. It exchanged all this information. We'd already decided we're exclusively explore this stuff. We're already in love with each other and I, when I saw him, I just, I felt like a reunion and he kissed me and there's this tongue in my mouth and I'm like, ah. Tongue.

So we call it Deco. I love that. Or a little squeeze on the tush, you know, or, you know, men are crazy about breasts and breasts are worth being crazy about, they're wonderful. And they men have gotten so much trouble for how they are about breasts. And so they get very tentative. And so I, you know this from having done Understanding Sex, which we now call Understanding Sex and Intimacy.

Remember UBF?

Dr. Willow Brown: I don't remember uBF. 

Leah Piper: I don't remember ubf. 

Alison Armstrong: It stands for Unlimited Breast Fields. Oh, 

Dr. Willow Brown: oh, ubf. 

Alison Armstrong: Yes. UBF. And there's Drive-By UBF, there's Covert Public UBF. 

Leah Piper: Oh, I love the Covert public ubf. 

Dr. Willow Brown: Those are super sexy 

Alison Armstrong: The fires burning. Oh my gosh. 

Dr. Willow Brown: There's your loverness going on. 

Leah Piper: Yes. I love the covert. Yeah.

Alison Armstrong: Just flash him. Yes. 

Dr. Willow Brown: It's just everyone likes boobs. He's better all of a sudden. 

Leah Piper: Well, you know, reminds me of is I'm started my period and I'm having the day of my period where I am really sensitive. I don't actually want my breasts to be touched. My nipples are on high alert. 

Dr. Willow Brown: Me too. I'm on the same day one. 

Leah Piper: So I love the attitude of being like, have as much as you want whenever you want. But like today, except for today, I want to stay the spirit of that. How do I stay in the spirit of that and still have this sovereignty day? 

Alison Armstrong: Okay, well it's not too much detail. Is it just the nipple? 

Leah Piper: It's especially the nipple. Yeah. And probably like another half an inch around the nipple. So the side boob is totally available. 

Alison Armstrong: Well, so you could have some fun, you could take like bandaids, you know, this is the zone.

Dr. Willow Brown: Draw a circle around the areola. Anything outside. 

Leah Piper: Yeah, put the pasties off and go you can look.

Dr. Willow Brown: It's fair game.

Leah Piper: But you can only touch around.

Dr. Willow Brown: And you got in touch with a flat palm. No fingertips coming at my boobs today. 

Alison Armstrong: There's one area where they really wrong corrections.

 

[00:12:44] Ultimatums, Deal Breakers, and Requirements

 

Dr. Willow Brown: Now there's a good rule of boundaries, right? There's a good way to use your boundaries in that moment. One of the things I learned at some point from a teacher was boundaries are either requests or requirements. So if it's a request, it's like, Hey, I really only want you to touch my breasts this way on day one of my period. But if you don't, I'm still going to love you and stay with you and it'll be all good. And then a requirement would be, I really need you to only touch my breasts this way on day one of my period. And if you don't follow this requirement, at some point it will be the undoing of this relationship. 

Alison Armstrong: Very good. Okay. I'm with you now. Yes. If I had it all my way. So this is something that I discovered in the last couple years because of one of my students. This idea, the word need, right? What do you need? I need the word need has a lot of charge on it. We're not supposed to need anything. Do we deserve what we need? How do I get what I need? I am. It means I'm weak that I need anything in the first place. That's what most men think. They think it's pathetic to need anything.

Alison Armstrong: There's somewhere between 15 and 20% of men who if you say you need something and you won't die without it, then you're exaggerating or outright lying. Yeah. But the need means an urgent requirement of something. Yeah. That's the dictionary definition. For some reason, the word require doesn't have all that stuff loaded onto it.

Dr. Willow Brown: Not as charged. Yeah. 

Alison Armstrong: It's just, I require this. It's exact same thing, but it has boundary in it, it has agreement in it. It has, this is the deal already in it. This is what's required. Required. Yeah. 

Leah Piper: Yeah. That's interesting. I was just trying that out in my body, like I really have a hard time with heavy needs.

Alison Armstrong: Yep. 

Leah Piper: It'd have a visceral sensation of not wanting to have them, haven't preferred if I just didn't have to have those. But require, yeah, that makes sense. There's an authority, there's a self understanding of self-knowledge, a self-awareness of how to love me. You know, I require this in order to flourish. Do you want to participate? Because guess what, it's kinda the role. 

Alison Armstrong: I'm committing flourishing and I don't hang out with people who don't support me in flourishing. So if you're going to be part of my life. These are requirements. Yeah. It's been amazing. It's, the other thing I've been really excited about is I did, it was last summer, it's called Own Your Ultimatums.

Dr. Willow Brown: Okay. And yeah, I like that title. It's good. Oh, yes. 

Leah Piper: Yeah. You're really good at these. 

Dr. Willow Brown: I know you got the best titles. 

Leah Piper: They're so good. Your genius with language is so exciting and so fun and so clarifying.

Dr. Willow Brown: That's why your books are so fun. 

Leah Piper: Yeah. I just have to celebrate that about you. Yeah. Okay. Continue. The Ultimatums Owning Your Ultimatums. Okay.

Alison Armstrong: Own your ultimatums. Yeah. And the subtitle is a grown up conversation with Alison Armstrong about what you're living with and what you're living without. And it came from me having a conversation with Dan, another conversation with Dan about a requirement that I kept trying to get over, right? This was something I needed and I thought I shouldn't need it and I should get over this need. And we kept having these blow ups over it when I would just get to the end of, ah, I need you to have a healthy guided lifestyle. I can't watch you do this to your body. And it seemed like it was tied to Greg, right? He died suddenly of a heart attack. But I even needed it with Greg watching what he did to his body and part of being human is it's my body. I can do what I want with it. Right. I reserve the right to do whatever I want to my body.

Alison Armstrong: Well, if we're married, your body affects every part of my life. And so I kept trying to get over this requirement of a healthy guide and lifestyle and it, I couldn't, it kept coming up and I'd finally be so furious. I'd blow my top, which is the exact worst time to say what you need or require and finally I just, I'm like, look, we got to talk about this. And again, and he said, that sounds like an ultimatum. And I'm like, oh, no. Oh no. You know, the voice of my head, oh, no, men hate ultimatums, don't have an ultimatum. Whatever you're doing, don't have an ultimatum. You know, the ideal woman, like, whoa, whoa, right? I can't have an ultimatum.

That's terrible. The Alison Armstrong can have an ultimatum. I'm having a release call with my partner right now. How about I do a release on this and then I'll come back And he said, sounds good.

And so I did all this Sedona release work on having ultimatums until it just, it all the charges gone. It just is what it is. Ultimatum means final offer. Okay. Well what if we started out relationships with presenting our final offer instead of presenting our final offer when we think the person's most likely to suck it up and just go with it because they don't want to lose us.

Dr. Willow Brown: Well that goes back to deal breakers at the early stages of your work. 

Leah Piper: I mean, I was just about to say like sex and marriage, like the correlation with what you're saying. 

Alison Armstrong: It's a whole thread. It turns out I've been doing it for ages and refining and refining and yeah. And I went back to him and I said, could we have a grownup conversation about ultimatums?

And he said,please. And so I'm having so much fun since then. Like, okay, think about, all right, so let's say you're dating and you're hoping to find that magical, wonderful person that then everything will be wonderful because they're wonderful. Doesn't work like that. But anyhow, and you have your list and you know what, you really, you turn into a terrible person if somebody doesn't like that.

And so you write it all down and then instead of waiting three or six months, you know, when you think you really have a future, then you tell 'em these things, which is what most people strategize to do. What if you led with it? Okay, we, let's talk about this stuff when we're, we don't care what the other person thinks.

Let's reveal our erotic blueprint when we don't care what they think about our blueprint, right? We're going to honor it. If you want to play and honor it too, then let's keep talking. But if you are going to make fun of me, ridicule me, shame me for what turns me on and turns me off, then the end. Let's talk about sensitive topics.

When we're insensitive, when we're the least sensitive to what their other person's going to think about it. 

Dr. Willow Brown: It's makes so much sense, but it's so backwards from what we have been doing inside relationships for eons. 

Leah Piper: And so it's so desperate to be loved when we think we don't have love. And so there's the temptation to put the pretzel, you know, to put ourselves back into the pretzel, to try to be this thing, to have this thing that we think we need or want or desire.

So much. We just want this, you know, one of the things that you actually helped me with as I was sort of calling in, I wanted my PhD in relationship. Well, where is he? He's out there. And so, that piece in Men in Marriage around what are your values? And taking a look at like this wide range of values of like what, really matters to you?

What would be a good match for you? Are you finding someone attracting people that are in the same ballpark? So how does this, like ultimatum piece, being able to sort of, it sounds like it, takes that original work in men and marriage regarding like values and being, finding clarity so that you really know what you're looking for. And it makes it even wider. If you start to take a look even of like bringing in the blueprint model the erotic blueprint model. Yes. Where is the adventure? Where is the, not that kind of adventure. 

Alison Armstrong: Oh no. 

Leah Piper: Yeah. And the deal breakers and the ultimatum. So I guess what I'm asking you is how did you and Dan, where did you reach, where did this take you, this ultimatum conversation?

Where did, what happened in the agreement space? 

Alison Armstrong: Oh boy. Well, just for people who are trying to follow what you're bringing up. What was originally called Men in Marriage, is now called Understanding Love and Commitment. Okay. What is originally called Men in Sex is now called Understanding Sex and Intimacy, because usually of one or the other.

And. They're part of the understanding level, right? Understanding men, understanding women, understanding sex and intimacy, understand loving commitment. And now both men and women participate in these courses online. We used to not be able to have men there because the women would freak out about the men being there, but everybody's watching the videos on their own, right?

And then we get together. I have conference calls with people in our online curriculum and I answer questions. I spend about 10 or 12 hours a month just answering questions of people in different courses and getting to hear the men's questions, right? It's like we get to have that panel, right? We get to have that panel all the time.

And yes, the beginning of Own Your Ultimatum. I say, okay, I'm going to give a brief history of this conversation. No, it didn't end up being brief because I could see I had a list that Greg qualified for when I met him, and then we did in sync with the opposite sex. Right? And what do you need to give? And if you're giving that, what do you need to get to keep being happy?

Giving it, which is really important. Relationships are not fulfilling if you don't get to, if you don't get to give what you most need to give, right? So in sync we talk about deal breakers and then understanding love and commitment. We start with your ideals, the perfect person, right? And then boil it down to the stand alone.

I'd rather be alone than be with someone who isn't that. And then of those things that they have to be, what is their time for them to become that? Because there's things we need to ask for and we need to describe what it would look like and we need to appreciate it. And then, and people need time to do that thing that you need to do.

But there's also, there's things I don't have time for. I don't have time for you to become honest and I have no history of being able to make dishonest people honest. So, you better be that, right? So we called the B list, right? So of all these deal breakers, what do they got to be? Right? You got to be that.

The B list. The B list, the be list, which is part of your deal breakers. We love that. Well, and then an ultimatums. What happened? Because I started working with so many singles after I became suddenly single. Right. And was learning. I had to relearn all of my own work. I'd done it In marriage for almost three decades.

Dr. Willow Brown: Yeah. You and Greg were together for that long? Three decades.

Alison Armstrong: Almost. Almost 20 years. Yeah, so, I had I had to relearn everything right? In this context of being single and horny. 

Dr. Willow Brown: Did you say horny? 

Alison Armstrong: I did. 

Dr. Willow Brown: You whispered. I barely heard you. You did. I shocked. Say it loud and proud. Loud. 

Alison Armstrong: It was so shocking. I didn't know what a steady diet for almost three decades of sex could be a person. And then it's gone. And then he's gone. Yeah. And I'm, crying. I'm grieving. I'm in shock and horny.

Dr. Willow Brown: Fucking horny. 

Alison Armstrong: Oh my God. It's good. I call my, yeah, it was a crazy horny widow. Oh my God. And my son, God bless him, my son he was, he's almost 34, so he was almost 31 at the time.

Put his arm around me, he said, what's that word? What's the word for that? Makes you horny? It's aphrodisiac. Oh, Aphrodisiac

I'm sobbing on his shoulder. Greg was his step like Greg was the best lover. 

Leah Piper: I love you.

Alison Armstrong: Yeah, I know. Right, mom, why do boys want to have sex more than girls don't have sex? Well, cause boys can reproduce all the time and girls can only reproduce by 30 hours a month. Oh. So how do you get girls to want to do it more? Be good at it. Whoa. How do you be good at it? 

Dr. Willow Brown: Good question.

Alison Armstrong: Yeah. He was 13 when he was asking me these questions. I promise I'll tell you about it. So anyhow, I had to relearn everything right in this context, and I didn't know if I ever wanted to be in a relationship again. I, thought I just, I just wanted a lover. I even wrote it down. I just wanted 24 hours a month, bring snacks, right? I could be happy with it.

Dr. Willow Brown: Bring strawberries and chocolate and champagne. 20 hours a month. Be ready. That's all I need. 

Alison Armstrong: And then I realized from an experience I had, I realized oh geez, I really, I want to be in a relationship again. Shoot. Especially since in, Luxe, people should start there. We, give away the big secret from love and commitment that, you know, what makes relationships so difficult is there's no such thing.

There's just no such thing. They don't actually exist. That's why they're so easy to change and so hard to keep going. And so interacting that way, right? With these instances of being related and who am I being and what am I speaking to and how am I listening? And the three things we can control. And so from the very beginning to answer your question is a long way around to your question, Leah, is before we ever met, Dan knew what was on my B list.

You got to be this. If you're not this, let's just stop now. And then after we met, I sat down with him with the rest of the list. But I learned something really important that I teach in owner ultimatums. And that is if you are not consistent with what you say you require. Then they know you don't actually require it.

So this thing where I kept trying to get over it was very confusing to him. And it wasn't until I committed to it that then he could interact with it as this was real to deal with. He says, we're going to break up over this. I said, yeah, we're going to have this fight every four to six weeks until you break up with me.

Until I break up with you. Yeah, you will break up with me. You'll get tired of this fight and you'll break up with me. He said, oh, you're right. And then he said, what else on that list? What we break up over? Everything each and everything, all 42 items, we would break up over, whoa, we better look at this list again. And he took notes. 

Dr. Willow Brown: So valuable to have that information up front, you know? But here's one of the things that I often will teach around these boundaries and like this B list and this other list is, well, I don't know if it totally relates Alison, and you let me know, but, boundaries can shift.

Like those requirements might be there early on in the relationship or one year, and then they might not be there the next, they can sh they're like different than rules, right? So tell me a little bit how this works with that. 

Alison Armstrong: So, in understanding sex and intimacy, you might remember this we call it the cover charge.

Dr. Willow Brown: I don't remember it.

 

[00:31:05] There's a Cover Charge Before Intimacy

 

Alison Armstrong: Yeah, we called the cover charge and and it's for people to make a list of, okay imagine I'm a restaurant and there are certain things on my menu. Well, how do you get into my restaurant? What's the cover charge? And so it's getting very clear about those boundaries. Like, no, you don't just get to hold my hand because I agreed to meet you in per person.

That's a huge intimacy, right? So actually think about like, what do I need for someone to hold my hand? What do I need for someone to kiss me? What do I need before I'm going to allow someone my home? What do I need to take my clothes off? Right? So whatever you could have on your venue, like, this is what I'd like to provide sexually.

What do I need in order to provide it? And I knew that I needed exclusivity. I describe it as one, I have one USB port. As much as I think polyamory is a beautiful ideal, I'm not good for it. And so that was the thing when Dan wanted to pursue, right? Because I asked him, when did you know this could be something really serious?

He said, probably about the third hour of us talking on the phone. And most men will say about three minutes, or in about three seconds they know what it can be, right? 30 seconds, they know what this could be. And so he wanted to pursue it. And I'm like, okay, if we're going to explore this, because that's what we committed to an exclusive exploration.

You know, it has to be exclusive. I can't be sexual with somebody who's being sexual for other people. So that's what we originally agreed to. And then as. You know, he went and did the Miss Jaiya quiz, right? And he sent me his results. He took a screenshot and he sent it to me. And my reaction was, you're a playground.

Because I knew the quiz, right? I knew the quiz. And what kinds of things would lead to certain kinds of results. I'm like okay, so that section that got you that percentage there's, you got to say yes when there's some things in that list you would say no to. And so what were your yeses, right?

Like, so I started inquiring into the results of The Erotic Blueprint so that we could talk about it ahead of time and where he wanted to go. What was like, A cliff to me, there are things that are just a cliff, right? And, so we, an answer to your question, Willow, we, from the very beginning would interact with all different kinds of needs from okay.

He would say something like, wouldn't it be fun too? Right? And he's way more okay with sex and sexuality than I was at the time. And I'd be like, he's like, wouldn't it be fun too? And I'm like, do you need that?

I don't know why. I don't know that I'll ever go there. Can you imagine the rest of your life without that? Do you need it? And God bless him because there wasn't any condemnation of what he was proposing. He could, he just would tell the truth. There are things that he would say. One thing he said, I don't know.

Dr. Willow Brown: True answer.

Alison Armstrong: I don't know. I said, okay, well we then, let's keep checking in on that. If you don't know, let's keep checking in. How are we doing with this? If we did what we're doing now for the rest of your life, would you be good with that? Right. And then there are other things that I was like, I'm never going to be that person.

So if you need that, then when you need that, I won't be enough. Which means I'm already not enough and I'm not going to live like that. So, which is it? And God bless him. He was beautiful. He said, you're enough and you deserve to be enough. Aw, I don't need that. And they just took it off the table.

Dr. Willow Brown: See, isn't that so incredible? That's such a great story and depiction of like the things that we think we need sometimes we actually don't, when we are fulfilled on a more soulful or heart level. 

Alison Armstrong: Yeah. And what we've, you know, ever since I started interviewing men in 1991, what men have said about sex is, I mean, women are led to believe that men are going to marry the best sex they ever have.

And it's not true. Not true. They're not connected. And what, you know, one of the things that makes a woman the right person for a man to marry is that in his perception, there's enough communication, there's enough spontaneity, there's enough experimentation that he thinks. Yeah, we can work this out.

You could be the only person I have sex with for the rest of my life. And we're still going to have fun because it, because that's how it's been. They operate based on how has it been, right? So if you're not open to each other from the very beginning, they're going to take that at face value that you never will be open.

So this will never work. And then the flip side of that is we have to make sure we're not false advertising, can't pretend to be open to something that we know that's never going to work for me, that won't ever be negotiable. It, at least as far as I can see, it won't ever be. So we shouldn't bet on that. It will be.

Dr. Willow Brown: Right. Yeah. 

Leah Piper: Okay. So powerful. I got it. I got one for you. 

Alison Armstrong: Okay. But can I finish one thing about the deal breakers. So over the course of all these years, We had another layer in regards to requirements and that's that. If you think about be like what you need a person to be right In love and commitment.

I teach you how you can inspire someone to be right. If you need someone to be affectionate, then just be playful. They virtually can't help but be affectionate around a playful person. But what if you need someone to be something no matter how you are, that when you're the worst version of yourself, you can still count on them to be that way.

Yeah. Like they generate, they're count honorable for generating, being that way no matter if you're ever in the worst day you ever had. So when you list the qualities that way, they exist very differently. And then if you think of B and then behaviors. So there's the qualities you need a person to be, and then you need those qualities mapped onto your life.

So if they're being generous, then go ahead and describe what would generous look like with your family, with your children, if you're bringing them into the relationship with your body. I put something on my list that never occurred to me before in 1991. I had on my list, loves my body. In 2019 loves my body and lets me love theirs.

Dr. Willow Brown: Good distinction. 

Alison Armstrong: I didn't even know to think that at the time. Right? I didn't know you could be with someone who loves your body but isn't really inhabiting their own. Greg. Was not keen on his body. He was really glad to get rid of it. Oh seriously. I felt his joy, his little exhilaration to be free.

He was like, that kind of freaks people out. That's someone would die and you would fill their joy. But I did for a very long time and Dan knows this because I've talked to him about it. Like I have 19 things on the B list and 23 things on the behaviors list. And I've told him, you know, it's probably going to take at least two more years before all these things on the list are verified because the circumstances haven't arrived yet.

Got to have the platform. Yeah. So he and I have not committed to each other in that way that people are like, You know, I don't know, tell death do his part or we're in it to win it or no, we have a deal. We get to keep each other for as long as we're giving each other what we need.

Love it. And that's out of profound love. Like, I don't, I'm not going to torture him to say with me when I can't give him what he needs and he can't give me what I need. That's me. And people do it all the time. It's most people's marriages.

Dr. Willow Brown: It's most relationships. 

Alison Armstrong: Yeah. Okay. You had another question. 

Leah Piper: Okay. So I'm imagining that you've got more and more couples coming to your platform and exploring your work.

Where it was such a female oriented audience when I went through your work and now it's expanding and it seems so exciting. It makes me want to like bring my husband along and revisit all of this material. Like, I want to see his list. Yes. I want to explore him deeper. Yes, I would love to, have a whole new conversation with this material and get to know his heart to the next level due to these kind, this type of inquiry. So, I'm assuming you probably have an image of a couple who started to do this work when they were already quite far along in their coupleness. And they're started to like, discover all of this. Like who were they when they came in and then they do the work and then who did they become as a result of this unfolding?

Do you have a before and after story of some students that you'd be able to share whether it turned into a we stayed together and went deeper or we uncoupled as a result? I'm kind of curious because I think both could be a success story.

 

[00:42:01] Success Stories from Working With Alison 

 

Alison Armstrong: Well, we definitely have them. What you were describing initially, what I call from good to great. That's my favorite. Right. To interact at from good to great, from, we're awesome to exquisite. Exquisite means carefully chosen. So everything you're doing, you're being, you're spending your energy on carefully chosen. It's all designed. That level of engineering, you know, I'm an engineer, right?

So that I get to do with Dan. There are others who are engaged in that, that are huge inspiration for me. Unfortunately, most people aren't motivated. When things are good, like set it and forget it. This works. Let's pay attention to what's not working. And since human instincts, literally, I wish I was exaggerating, we're doomed, right?

If we're not wide awake to the impulses, to the compulsions, to the drives, to the prohibitions, to even speak up and say, I need something. Or even I call it don't ask, don't tell, don't say, honey, what do you need, honey? If you had it all your way, what would we do this weekend? Right? Don't ask that, right?

And don't say that. Well, if I had it all my way, we would do it like this. The prohibition against asking and telling it it's human. It's not just male and female. So to overcome that, it needs to be really safe. But we're so quick to judge what somebody asks for. And then it seems like their needs are obstacles to our needs and it, I mean, it's nobody's fault actually, that most relationships just, they just turned a crap.

And so I wish the good to Great. We have way more stories of and amazing people who are dedicated to supporting our work because our work saved their marriage. And those are beautiful, right? That they literally were on, you know, it was do this or go to the divorce lawyer and. And I think one of my favorites are people who are just starting out.

I have something now called the smart singles Intensive where I get to interact with, I have special classrooms, you know, with the people in the intensive and customize the courses for them. Do this next, then that, okay, do this to the fifth session and then switch over to this one and then go back. And it's really fun.

And, so the people in the intensives, as they're getting uber clear, like so clear about who they are and what a person would need to be for them to be better off than being single, like single stops being a predicament to escape, then I get interact with them as they're interacting with the person who showed up inside that clarity. And okay. Willow, you used the F word before.

So there was one of my students who was working on her list and she didn't want to work on it anymore. She's like, this seems hopeless. This seems like looking for a needle in a haystack. And I thought about how do you find a needle in a haystack? And the answer was right there. Said, do you know how to find a needle in a haystack?

And she said, how? I said, get a big fucking magnet. 

Dr. Willow Brown: Oh my god, I love that so much. That's exactly what it's a big fucking magnet. 

Alison Armstrong: But here's the thing. When you have clarity about who you are, and you represent yourself as who you are, early and often, which is the most attractive thing a woman can do for to a man, like they're just blown away by it, right?

You don't just have a magnet. You become the man, you are the magnet. You are your clarity, your loyalty to yourself, the representation that it's like magic.

Leah Piper: You're so irresistible when you're just yourself. It is like magic sauce. It is so good. And everybody wants. You think it could be that easy. It's that easy. And everybody wants to be special and unique.

Alison Armstrong: Well then be yourself. There's only one of you. 

Dr. Willow Brown: That's right. You just be authentic and the right one will stick with you. Yeah. 

Alison Armstrong: So that's how Dan and I ended up. It'll be two years in October. 

Dr. Willow Brown: Congratulations. It's exciting. 

Alison Armstrong: It's really exciting. And one of the things that's really fun about it is we so support each other. We so take care of each other. This morning he was like, okay, how can I support you this week? And we don't live together. I literally live in his backyard. 

Dr. Willow Brown: You do? Like in his studio, in the backyard. 

Alison Armstrong: They called it the guest house. Yes. And Dan named it Harmony. So I live in Harmony.

Dr. Willow Brown: Oh, you live in Harmony. 

Alison Armstrong: He visits me in harmony. Oh. And we have this thing every day called I'm going to blush. So I was not getting enough attention. Right? He's got three kids. He's got a whole life. He's got, I call him the Lord of the manor. He's got 35 acres in the mountains. Right? And I was suffering from lack of attention and I was turning into a terrible person and he said, okay, I have an idea. You pick a time every day and we'll just lie down. Lie down. Yeah. We'll just lie down. We'll just lie down. We'll hold each other. We can talk if we want. We can nap. We can get frisky if we want, but we're just going to start with that. Every day you pick the time because your schedule's more restricted than mine.

And then he gets this little smile because he hasn't had to work in 30 years and so he has all this free time, right. Well, now we have jokes about, you know, there's a lot of words that can go before down. There's the lie down, right? There's something called the dirty down. It's not what you think, though.

The dirty down is when I take the sheet out and I put it over the bedspread because we've just come in from feeding the horses. You don't want to get the bedspread dirty, the dirty down. 

We don't want to take a shower, just want to each other. But we're dirty, right? I'm a country girl. I've been on my tractor. I got manure, right? So down well, there's a go down. 

Dr. Willow Brown: A go down, now that sounds dirty. Yeah, you can make up your own balance.

Alison Armstrong: He made this up, back in January and it has transformed life.

Dr. Willow Brown: Oh, that is fantastic. 

Alison Armstrong: Yeah. And it's that thing we have to interact with. We have to interact with enough. There's ideals and then there's what is enough. And so we have, on Wednesdays, we have a day date, you know, in the middle of my work week we just carve out this period of time that we spend with each other. We might do chores, right? We're often feeding hay in the horse. 

Dr. Willow Brown: But that's, you both love that. And it's like, it's actually good for your nervous system to be with the horses. 

Alison Armstrong: Yeah. We love being together. But it's just enough. So this three hours on Wednesdays and then somewhere between like maybe 20 minutes or an hour every day, like just depending on when we can.

And the thing that, I mean, you guys know this, I have this huge house right at this huge house, 200 miles from here. And I was becoming a smaller person inside of this huge house, and part of it was just being female and being afraid. Right. Living in the country. There's a mountain lion. In the canyon, big guy, right. And I didn't realize how much of my energy was spent just monitoring my seat. And there's something about living in his backyard, in this circle of protection. He's so committed to me being safe and happy. And so I spent a lot of time alone, which I didn't know that I loved being alone.

I couldn't own that. Actually, I was 61 years old when I owned. I loved it. 

Dr. Willow Brown: It's a really nice, I love being, I'm a big fan myself. 

Alison Armstrong: And so we don't live together because we both love being alone. And he's 90 steps away. He's on the other side of the pool in the middle of this aspen forest. And you know there's bears and moose. The bear showed up, tried to get my kitchen. But we're always in each other's space by invitation. Always. Never. Oh, your here I was hoping to have the living room to myself. 

Leah Piper: This is so reminding me of our interview yesterday where we talked about gratitude and appreciation. Appreciation and looking at appreciation as an investment that appreciates, you know, it, it doubles up. It expands. We really appreciate parts or all parts of our life. We can really see how we can make certain things grow or if we want, we can put our attention to having them grow in a different direction.

And it just really reminds me of this place in your life of having this amazing, you know, the first relationship and you got these beautiful kids and then the next relationship and the is precious. It's such a beautiful love story. We've created so many examples that we all got to savor along the way as you brought more and more information into our lives.

And now you're in this next stage, right? Where you get to be like sexually flourishing in your sixties, you know, all new rules, you know, nothing has to be defined the way we sort of look at what we think we want when we're thinking about marriage or kids or families or career. And we're kind of doing that trajectory, right?

And then there's this other part of our lives. You are getting to appreciate what's possible and then share that next level with all of us. I think it's magnificent. Yeah. I think you really got a special magical life. It just keeps bringing me gifts and I can tell that's because it's where you put your attention.

You look for what's right. Maybe celebrate it. 

Dr. Willow Brown: Yeah. It's so beautiful the way your work has, you know, come from inside of yourself and from your own experiences and also from all the research that you've done. And just like, you know, really tuning in and listening to soul, to human beings, what's really going on with people and how they interact with each other, understand each other, don't understand each other.

You know, how can we shed more light on what it means to be in an intimate relationship with another person? So powerful. 

Leah Piper: Yeah. And it's not stage specific, you know, like, which you're experiencing now is so applicable to any stage in our life. 

Dr. Willow Brown: Exactly.

Leah Piper: And yet it can be very applicable to a specific season in our life too.

I just love that it can weave and it's available to all of us no matter where we're at. You know? Yay for you. And yay for us.

 

[00:54:25] Fly Your Freaky Flag

 

Dr. Willow Brown: Yes. Any final words of wisdom for our listeners who are just really feeling lost or confused when it comes to love? Relationships, sexuality, intimacy. 

Alison Armstrong: Oh gosh.

Dr. Willow Brown: Just sum it up for us. In a word. 

Leah Piper: Just sum it all up. 

Alison Armstrong: Most men can't think of anything more fun than sex. So if you're not having fun, you might be missing the point from the world. What would make it fun? Everything we're doing to get men to love us is silly because they're born loving us and we mostly get in the way of it.

And fly your freaky flag. Whatever your freaky flag is, you know, you channel or you're edgy or whatever. Whatever you think they're going to break up with you about advertise it from the very beginning. So they'll just go away without you ever knowing it. You won't feel the rejection. They just can't wait. Everybody has fleshy parts. That was a lesson from Dan. 

Dr. Willow Brown: Everybody has flashy parts? I thought you said flashy. 

Alison Armstrong: No fleshy. 

Dr. Willow Brown: Fly that freak flag and flash away. Flash away. Flashy. 

Alison Armstrong: Yeah. Everybody has fleshy parts and you know, just right definition. I don't think there's a the right person. I think they're a right persons, but a right person for you.

You're not going to have to conceal yourself or change yourself for. So the way to find out who's the right person for you is don't conceal yourself. And don't change yourself. Because if you do that, then you're going to keep people who aren't right for you. 

Dr. Willow Brown: Beautiful. Well done. Yes. That was a synopsis. That was perfect. I love that. 

Alison Armstrong: There's no scarcity. 

Dr. Willow Brown: There's no scarcity. Yeah.

Leah Piper: Yeah. Thank you for, thank you. We need to be reminded of that. Yeah. There's so much love and so much abundance available. 

Dr. Willow Brown: Yeah. It has been such a pleasure. Allison, so wonderful to reconnect with you, to just sit with you in the flesh and just hear Enchante on all the fun, and thank you for sharing with us vulnerably about your own experience. It's a pleasure to be with you. We're honored.

 

[00:50:04] Devi's Generous Free Offer

 

Leah: Which leads into your generous free offer to help people get started on their own journey.

Devi is gifting you with a Free introduction to Authentic Tantra so that you can have a delicious appetizer into this this five elements world. Is there anything you wanna say about that? 

Devi Ward Erikson: Yeah, so our Free Introduction to Authentic Tantra introduces you to our foundation, which are the four pillars of Healing.

So the four pillars of healing are: meditation, movement, connection, and pleasure. And so the authentic Tantra modality teaches tools and methods that fall under each of these four pillars.

And so the meditations obviously are the Tibetan five element teaching. So in this free intro, you'll get a uh, whatever, a tutorial on what those are and how they work.

So I draw this fun diagram of the energy body and how the five element energy body practices work to heal and clear, purify and enrich your entire energy body, and then therefore your physical body. 

And then in one of the last videos, I offer a five step solo sexual healing session using some of the methods that we talked about.

And so, it's a really wonderful, in my opinion, it's a very wonderful intro and it comes with practical, concrete tools that you can begin using in your life immediately. So that's that free intro. 

Dr. Willow: It sounds like such a like a good, safe, okay, you can try this on. Like, if you've always been what the hell is Tantra? I've heard it. Does it just mean you're having sex with a lot of different people in a room together? What is this stuff? This is very foundational. It's very tangible, digestible, this free gift that Devi's offering so Devidefinitely take advantage of it. 

Devi Ward Erikson: Yeah. Thank you. 

Leah: Thank you so much for being with us today. 

Devi Ward Erikson: Oh, it's such a pleasure. It's such pleasure. Yeah. I'm so grateful. Thank you. 

Announcer: Now it's time for our favorite part. The dish.

 

[00:57:12] Alison's Luxe Program

 

Leah Piper: Yeah. I can't wait to go check out the Luxe program. 

Alison Armstrong: Oh, I'm so proud of it. Oh my gosh. It's so fast. It's less than eight hours of videos and like the whole world occurs differently. 

Dr. Willow Brown: Yeah, yeah. Can't say no to that. Yeah. 

Leah Piper: Sign me up. We're in. Thank you. Appreciate you're time today. Love, love, love

 

[00:57:38] Let's Dish on Alison Armstrong

 

Announcer: Now our favorite part. The dish.

Leah Piper: Welcome back. It is Sex Reimagined Leah Piper and 

Dr. Willow Brown: Dr. Willow Brown. And we just interviewed one of our sheros. We had so much fun. It was so great. Allison Armstrong. Just what an incredible gift to the world of romantic relationships and how to have a successful one. How to have fun in one, as Leah puts it, having a mastery over a disastery inside of your relationship.

Leah Piper: Yeah, let's be a mastery. Couple people. I think that she has given me so many gems over the years, and this interview really reminded me. Same one with Sheri Winston. They both reminded me how much I have integrated. Their teachings into how I see the world and how I experience my deepest desires to have a fulfilling love life.

And their work has had such a profound impact on me with Allison. You know, I remember her teaching this whole piece about, kind of coming of age and I think as young girls, we get the awareness somehow that we are these attractive beings that get attention. I remember remember being like 11, 12, 13 and this whole idea around wanting attention from boys and dressing the way I thought you had to dress in order to get that attention.

So I remember my first pushup bra. I remember being obsessed with makeup. I remember like frantically trying to do this thing that would get boys to like me. I didn't know that I was settling. She has this whole concept that sexual attraction, all it means is that someone wants to get their body next to your body and do yummy things.

But if you really want love, it's about being charming and enchanting. And when someone is charmed and enchanted with you, yes, they're sexually attracted to you, but they also feel compelled to want to make you laugh, to want to protect you, to want to make you happy, and. That struck me, so hardcore because my whole life I thought in order to get love, I had to be sexually attractive. And I didn't know that what I really wanted was for what I wanted was love. And that the key to love was just being yourself. And so, although we didn't talk about that directly, there were some indirect pieces of the conversation that kept on bringing that into my mind and heart, and how much I have thought over the years that I wish someone would've told my teenage self, who desperately wanted to be liked and loved, and thought I had to be somebody else in order to get it.

And so I spent a lot of time not being myself, not knowing how to be myself, just wanting to be what I thought someone would love, which never got me love. How painful that has been over the years. 

Dr. Willow Brown: Yeah, I think so many of us, I certainly can relate to that, of just like taking a very long time to figure out what was authentic and what was true, you know, and just having had to play out a certain mold or a certain, it's got to look a certain way or be a certain style in order to be of value in order to be lovable.

So, you know, it was so cool to sit with Allison and listen to her and where her work is at now, because Yeah. I know you and I have dug into her work many years ago, and as you said, it's definitely colored the way that our work has been. Offered to the world. And so it was great to kind of see how, where her work has evolved and it, and developed into, yeah.

And how it reminded us of that early work that she did. So really, she's just been following this thread and fine-tuning this thread. And you know, one of the things I really loved that she talked about during this interview was the B list. And so you think of the B list. You're like, well, it's not the A-list, so it must be on the B list, but it's the be B list.

So yeah, it's like, what is, what do you need your partner to be? Who do you want to be with? Who do you want to be in relationship? And she's got a whole thing about how she gets that B list out of people. But it was just cool to learn about it. To hear about it and how it also. Relates to behaviors, the b list relates to behaviors within the relationship.

because a lot of her earlier work was about like, telling, basically opening women's eyes to the fact that men are not women, they are not misbehaving women. Right. They are a totally different species. A totally different brain chemistry. Just completely different, you know, I know she's a big fan of the Luann Brizendine work as well.

The male brain, and the female brain. So if you haven't read those books highly recommend those two because they are, they just couldn't be more different all throughout developmental stages. And so she really, all of her work is. Is about understanding each other real. She's probably a four on the Enneagram like you and I, are.

Leah Piper: She probably is. Yeah. And I, and it's one of the things I love about her style of thinking is how she bothers looking up the definitions of words and how powerful that is. Yeah. That has always struck me about her work. I love that she brings the definition of language because there's power to the psycho linguistics of our language and the words that we choose to use.

And when you use a word and you didn't even know, just like the specific meaning, you got it in the ballpark, but when you get down to the meaning, wow. Does it expand in profundity? And how you use it or how you then will intend to use it in the future. 

Dr. Willow Brown: Yeah. So powerful. She's really just a smart woman, you know, she's a scholar of relationships.

Just curious. Yeah. And just developing and creating And what is she 61 now? And she is in the hottest time of her. romantic life. And she shared a lot on this interview around that was so sweet. 

Leah Piper: Adorable oh my god. And she's so lit up, so bright, so shiny, so radiant. You know, I think that's what I really loved about who she gets to be as a parishionist.

Because we need more voices that are her age. I can't tell you how many friends and clients I have that start to feel totally invisible. Absolutely. Like, the world is just leaving them behind. Whether it's technology, whether it's sex, whether it's relationships and dating and it just, ah, crushes my little soul because these are important people in my world, in life, and I love what she's standing for. And then she's not done. Didn't you get the feeling like she's still just started and she's just getting started? Started and it's like, wow, 

I want that kind of energy. And you know what else is cool about the progression of her work is she's completely retitled everything. You know? And I think that takes a lot of guts.

I mean, here you've built this empire with a certain languaging and a very specific demographic of who your audience is. Yeah. And she was mutable. Yeah. Enough. 

And oh, there's a specific word. It'll come to me if it needs to, but there's something about her willingness to be influenced by culture and in so doing not only has most of her work is now online versus live, it was always live when I started. It's also way more inclusive. She's moving away from so many gender specifics and really coming around to humanity. Yeah. And I think that's, there's a lot. There's quite a bit of a learning curve there. It's. Been true for me and I can only imagine how much harder it is for people of an older generation, to be able to be that adaptable. 

And I was very impressed and encouraged. by her adaptability, it really gave me fuel and energy to want to get better and better at that. 

Dr. Willow Brown: Oh, I love that. That's fantastic. She really is a queen of an example in this industry and enjoy her interview.

Let us know what you learn from it. Let us know what you get from it. And you probably are going to want to take notes on this one because there's such pearls of wisdom threat threaded throughout it. 

Leah Piper: Type some of your highlights into the comments. Cause I'm assuming if you've gotten this far, you've probably watched or listened to the episode.

So your feedback's really important to us. We want this not to just be a conversation between Willow and I, but it's a conversation for all of us because we're here to grow and expand and to understand each other. So your part in the conversation is super valuable. 

Dr. Willow Brown: It's true. We want to hear what you got to say, what's going on for you, and even if you're like, I really enjoyed it, I don't know what else to say, we want to hear that too.

Leah Piper: Yeah, and I also just, I feel like I never met Greg. I've never even seen a picture of Greg.

Dr. Willow Brown: I know, but don't you feel like you know him? 

Leah Piper: Yes. Like listening to her CDs over the years and the stories of her work. I mean, you just feel like, you know, the two of them, and I hadn't known that he had passed away, and so I, didn't either. I thought her, the pieces that she set around grief really dropped me into my heart. In a sweet way. And yeah. And I'm so happy she's got this new guy too, and how much she's learning. Oh, and then in her interest in the erotic blueprints, 

Dr. Willow Brown: I mean, oh yeah. It was so good. 

You go Queen.

We'll see you on the other side. 

Announcer: Thanks for tuning in. If the hosts seem to know what they were talking about, that's because they do. Leah Piper is a Tantric sex Master coach and a positive psychology facilitator. Dr. Willow Brown is both a Chinese and functional medicine doctor and a Taoist sexology teacher.

Announcer: Don't forget your comments, likes, subscribes, and suggestions matter. Let's realize this new world together.